The first case of infection with the MERS coronavirus has just been revealed by the American health authorities. The patient was returning from Saudi Arabia, the country most affected by the coronavirus.
Since the start of the epidemic in June 2012, the spread of the MERS coronavirus has been limited to countries bordering Saudi Arabia, the source country of this coronavirus. But the epidemic has accelerated and several Europeans have been affected. Today is the first time that the virus has crossed the Atlantic.
Return from Saudi Arabia
For now, little information has filtered out on the first American patient infected with the MERS coronavirus.
Dr Anne Schuchat, director of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the infected patient is currently hospitalized and quarantined at a hospital in Indiana. This person, a member of the medical community, was returning from Saudi Arabia when he felt fever, cough and shortness of breath, the first symptoms of the infection.
How did he get infected with the MERS coronavirus? the question remains unanswered. The patient said he had not been in contact with a dromedary, the main source of infection identified to date. It is very likely that the patient was infected by a resident of the country. WHO had confirmed in May 2013 that human-to-human transmission was possible.
Since the discovery of this first case, the director of the CDC has been reassuring. She claims that “this person’s condition is stable” and stressed that this case “presented a low risk to the rest of the population”.
Now, the US federal services are trying to find all the people who may have been in contact with the patient between Saudi Arabia, London and Chicago.
An acceleration of the epidemic
With the first case discovered in June 2012, the spread of the MERS coronavirus has since been relatively low. But since the beginning of 2014, the number of victims of the virus has suddenly increased. For the month of April alone, the human toll rises to 39 dead.
Since the start of the epidemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded 293 cases of the MERS coronavirus, including 93 deaths, most of them in Saudi Arabia. Cases have been identified in 10 other countries: the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Greece, Egypt, the United Kingdom, Tunisia, Italy, Kuwait and France. Almost a year ago, the coronavirus claimed a French victim at the Lille CHRU. It was a 65-year-old man returning from Dubai.
A dangerous “cousin” of SARS
If the MERS coronavirus shows similarities with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), it still differs on one essential point: it is less contagious than this virus which killed nearly 800 people around the world in 2003. On the other hand, this new virus is potentially much more lethal than its “cousin” with a death rate of 65% against 8% for SARS.
The coronavirus exhibits many of the same symptoms as its cousin. A patient who is the victim suffers from a lung infection, fever, cough and severe breathing difficulties. The only difference is that MERS also causes acute kidney failure.
As of yet, there is no preventative treatment to prevent the spread of the MERS coronavirus.
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